The group was founded by Harold Ware, a Communist Party (CP) official working for the federal government in Washington D.C., and it is for him that it is named. By 1934 the group had around 75 members, divided into about eight cells.

The members were initially recruited into Marxist study groups, and then into the CP itself. They shared a belief that Marxist ideologies were the correct way to approach the problems of the ongoing Great Depression. The agents not only provided classified documents to Soviet intelligence, but also used their political influence to further the CP's goals.

The Ware group initially consisted of young lawyers and economists hired by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), a New Deal agency that reported to the secretary of agriculture but was independent of the Department of Agriculture bureaucracy.